Related papers: Whisker-based Tactile Flight for Tiny Drones
Perceiving the environment through touch is important for robots to reach in cluttered environments, but devising a way to sense without disturbing objects is challenging. This work presents the design and modelling of whisker-inspired…
Nano-size drones hold enormous potential to explore unknown and complex environments. Their small size makes them agile and safe for operation close to humans and allows them to navigate through narrow spaces. However, their tiny size and…
Aquatic mammals, such as pinnipeds, utilize their whiskers to detect and discriminate objects and analyze water movements, inspiring the development of robotic whiskers for sensing contacts, surfaces, and water flows. We present the design…
Whisker-like touch sensors offer unique advantages for short-range perception in environments where visual and long-range sensing are unreliable, such as confined, cluttered, or low-visibility settings. This paper presents a framework for…
Distributed tactile sensing for multi-force detection is crucial for various aerial robot interaction tasks. However, current contact sensing solutions on drones only exploit single end-effector sensors and cannot provide distributed…
Here we propose and investigate a novel vibrissal tactile sensor - the TacWhisker array - based on modifying a 3D-printed optical cutaneous (fingertip) tactile sensor - the TacTip. Two versions are considered: a static TacWhisker array…
Robotic exploration under uncertain environments is challenging when optical information is not available. In this paper, we propose an autonomous solution of exploring an unknown task space based on tactile sensing alone. We first designed…
Nano-drones, distinguished by their agility, minimal weight, and cost-effectiveness, are particularly well-suited for exploration in confined, cluttered and narrow spaces. Recognizing transparent, highly reflective or absorbing materials,…
Robotic systems show significant promise for water environmental sensing applications such as water quality monitoring, pollution mapping and biodiversity data collection. Conventional deployment methods often disrupt fragile ecosystems,…
Tactile sensing and the manipulation of delicate objects are critical challenges in robotics. This study presents a vision-based magnetic-actuated whisker array sensor that integrates these functions. The sensor features eight whiskers…
Small aerial robots are particularly well-suited for search and rescue in confined and hazardous environments due to their agility, low cost, and ability to traverse through cluttered spaces that are inaccessible to larger platforms.…
Drones operating in complex environments face a significant threat from thin obstacles, such as steel wires and kite strings at the submillimeter level, which are notoriously difficult for conventional sensors like RGB cameras, LiDAR, and…
Perception using whisker-inspired tactile sensors currently faces a major challenge: the lack of active control in robots based on direct contact information from the whisker. To accurately reconstruct object contours, it is crucial for the…
This research develops a novel sensor for aquatic robots inspired by the whiskers of harbor seals. This sensor can detect the movement of water, offering valuable data on speed, currents, barriers, and water disturbance. It employs a…
Underwater flow sensing is critical for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and environmental monitoring, yet existing sensors often suffer from low responsiveness, high detection thresholds, limited directional discrimination, complex…
Aerial insects can effortlessly navigate dense vegetation, whereas similarly sized aerial robots typically depend on offboard sensors and computation to maintain stable flight. This disparity restricts insect-scale robots to operation…
Wings of flying animals can not only generate lift and control torques but also can sense their surroundings. Such dual functions of sensing and actuation coupled in one element are particularly useful for small sized bio-inspired robotic…
My research objective is to explicitly bridge the gap between high computational performance and low power dissipation of robot on-board hardware by designing a bio-inspired tapered whisker neuromorphic computing (also called reservoir…
Tactile sensors have been introduced to a wide range of robotic tasks such as robot manipulation to mimic the sense of human touch. However, there has only been a few works that integrate tactile sensing into robot navigation. This paper…
Nano-drones, with their small, lightweight design, are ideal for confined-space rescue missions and inherently safe for human interaction. However, their limited payload restricts the critical sensing needed for ego-velocity estimation and…